25-Apr-2010 --At the Zulia GPS_YV Team meeting on 11 April 2010 in Colegio Los Robles in Maracaibo, Zulia State, Venezuela, we agreed to take a survey to decide the date of the next activity of this group the GPS enthusiasts. The winning option was for Sunday 25 April 2010 when we would try to accomplish three activities in the same day: 1). Hunt the Confluence N10 W72, 2). Recording data for the VENRUT map, and 3). hunting for the Zulia State Center Point.

Having all ready programmed the sequence of activities, Gregory Garcia, Romulus González and Orlando Nava departed at 06:40 am from Ciudad Ojeda to a meting point in the Maracaibo municipality of San Francisco at the Polisur headquarters, where we met with other members of the Zulia Team who would accompany us on this adventure. At 08:00 am we assembled 8 members with three trucks, 13 GPS units, 4 radios and other equipment necessary to carry out the activities. We then proceeded to take pictures of the start up and form 3 working groups: Team Terius formed by Héctor Carrero, Eduardo Antúnez and Carlos Andrés Cipriano, Team Vitara including Gregorio Garcia, Romulus González, Orlando Nava, and Team Explorer formed by Jorge Luis Jordan, Andres Jordan.

At 08:10 a.m. we started down the road towards Perijá region, arriving at Caujaro sector which is approximately 8 kilometers from the departure point and we arrived to Villa del Rosario, where we enjoyed a typical local breakfast (Arepas with cheese, empanadas, fried pork, and potatoes stuffed with cheese). Back on the road again at 10:17 a.m., we continued up to kilometer 104 of the Perijá road, also known as Road 4, or the Caribbean road, we turned to the East, looking for the West coast of Maracaibo Lake. We went through several villages including Villa Vieja, San Ignacio and Sartanejo before arrive to Barranquitas, a fishing port from which we would depart by boat to our desired Confluence Point N10 W72. At 11:50 am we were in Barranquitas hiring a boat that would take us 3.2 kilometers to the desired Confluence N10 W72 point. We contracted Mr. Leonel Fernández, owner of “La Maracucha” boat and explained to him what we do and why we wanted to make the trip (in a joking manner with him saying that he should not think we were crazy to go to a point in the middle of the Lake with a device to only do circles around it).

At 12:20pm we were within 50 metros of the point where all zeroes should appear for the minutes and seconds of the geographical position, so we asked to Leonel to turn the boat motor off, allowing us to drift toward the point. Once there we began the “Confluence Dance” to get to all zeroes, in the last field of the geographical position, which was no trivial matter because the current would not let us sit still on the specific point. It took us about 30 minutes to take the required photos of the coordinates to comply with the protocol of DCP. At any cost it was our desire to attain all zeroes so we asked to Leonel to move the boat in various directions until at 12:45pm our friend Héctor Carrero attained in his GPSmap 60CSx what nobody had never attained in the three previous visits to this Confluence, those beautiful zeroes in all the fields. After about 10 more minutes on this point the rest of the members of the hunting party managed the same result in their various GPS units: GPSmap 60CSx, Nuvis y Oregon.

The confluence point is located at around 3.2 km to the East coast of Barranquitas in Maracaibo Lake; to achieve the objective we proceeded to take photos of rigor to be included in the report as well as different photos for our record. Once we completed this hunting, we proceeded back to Barranquitas shore. After completing our objective, we proceeded to go to Barranquitas where we observed the different fish and shrimp facilities. We refreshed ourselves with cold energizing drinks to alleviate high ambient temperature and humidity reigning in this time of year. Then we took up other activities: the recording of tracks and POI’s in Barranquitas as well as hunting the Center of Zulia State, activities culminated successfully.

The main economic activity of the region is fishing and shrimp farming. The main activity in the areas surrounding Barranquitas is bovine animals and swine livestock. The climate in the area is warm; by the effects of current climatic phenomena the temperatures reach 45° C (113F) with intermittent precipitation, which is evidenced in the surrounding vegetation by the degree of drought of this region.